Making Sense of Last Night’s Mueller Filing

I wanted to briefly discuss this new Special Counsel filing (a sentencing memorandum) in the case of Alex van der Zwaan, a second-tier but not insignificant player in the Russia story. Most of the document deals with arguments about how van der Zwaan should be sentenced, why, cataloging his lies, etc. Not stuff that concerns us terribly.

The key is one paragraph I’ll reprint below. It is another link in the chain of contact between Paul Manafort and agents of Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign. It also adds new detail to a picture which I believe will eventually show that Manafort was sent into the Trump campaign by forces from abroad. The key factual assertion is that during the 2016 campaign Manafort and his deputy were in touch with a person who was tied to Russian intelligence and who they knew he had active ties to Russian intelligence. Here’s the paragraph.